40
‘Whose prick idea was it to have a picnic again?’ said Lorna, as they nibbled dejectedly on soggy spinach and feta empanadas in Roundhay Park, the following Friday at dusk.
‘I recall some hectoring over it being your thirty-fifth birthday,’ Harriet said, as the rain spattered on the picturesque wicker hamper with leather buckles, and diluted their drinks like a splash of meteorological soda. ‘Despite Roxy pointing out the forecast was … uneven.’
‘The tea lights were pure hubris,’ Lorna nodded at the smoking holders nestled in the grass, which had flickered for all of a minute.
‘I hope this doesn’t affect the glue on my fresh set of lashes,’ Roxy said, from under her frilly umbrella. She looked like a smartphone-generation Eliza Doolittle. ‘At least the tiny Cornish pasties are nice.’
‘I got into my al fresco street-food recipes and wouldn’t hear sense,’ Lorna sighed, wrapping her rainbow angora cardigan around her pencil dress more tightly. She picked up the pink cava from its forty-five-degree angle in the grass, topping up their plastic cups.
It was an inconveniently timed birthday, if Harriet was honest: obliging Roxy to spend time in their company a mere week after the disastrous phone call, when it was hardly a sign of affection to attend, more an act of war not to. Harriet could’ve done with a little longer for her feelings to heal. Plus she’d taken no wedding bookings this weekend to keep it clear for this, and in her larger downturn, she regretted it.
‘You should know our Roxanne was totally, totally different when I called back and said, what the hell,’ Lorna said, before she arrived at the picnic spot. ‘She was hormonal, she said, and I’d caught her at a wicked moment. We all have them. I reminded her of some of Scott’s greatest hits and she was very remorseful.’
Although Harriet trusted Lorna implicitly, she suspected some PR management. Lorna felt at fault for engineering a situation where Harriet got Roxy’s unvarnished views, ergo, this was the patch-up of the torn hull. She also noticed there was no mention of the girls’ holiday being resurrected.
‘You didn’t tell her about the speakerphone bork, did you?’ Harriet said, warily.
‘Absolutely not, framed it all as what I thought.’
The sky was a foreboding gunmetal-grey. Lorna had resolutely refused gifts or treats, at a generally skint time, and catered: there was no way of fighting the picnic plans.
There was also no Gethin to provide distraction from their wonky triangle: he had a formal work do, so was splitting the difference and meeting them at The Dive later.
‘House rules,’ Lorna had announced, as opener. ‘Discussion of the world’s shittest little tinpot ruler with the Madchester hair is banned. No mentions of Pol Pot Noodle, please.’
Both Harriet and Roxy avoided each other’s eyes and mumbled assent.
After a short squall, the sun came out and their respective pieces of outerwear came off, somewhat ambitiously.
‘How’s it going with the new man, Rox?’ Lorna said.
‘Oh, you know,’ Roxy said, tucking her hair behind her ear and stretching out her legs in her maxi dress. They might be in a park, but she was in delicate heels, as always. ‘Fabulous, but it’s early days.’
‘What does he do for a living again?’
‘Something important for banks. I don’t really understand it.’
‘That’s a nice little bauble. Joseph gift, was it?’ said Lorna, nodding to a slim white-gold bangle that Roxy had pushed up her now-exposed slender arm, like Cleopatra.
‘Oh, yes,’ Roxy said, as if she’d forgotten she’d put it on, playing with it. She looked unusually sheepish, possibly because it looked OTT for early days, even by the standards of men she dated. ‘White gold. Tiffany’s.’
‘Huh. That’s a coincidence,’ Harriet said, ‘I saw Jon with a Tiffany’s bag in town, a few weeks back. It’s the loaded man’s gifting choice of the season. I have a feeling Jon’s was destined for his horrendous mother.’
Roxy flushed scarlet, an extraordinary shade of claret grape that was so striking as to be impossible to politely ignore. Harriet had never seen someone change colour like that before. Roxy dropped her eyes down to her lap.
‘Are you OK?’ Harriet said anxiously, into her continuing silence. ‘Did I say something wrong?’
‘Oh God, is it a push present? A pre-push baby mama present? Are you up the stick?’ Lorna said, then frowned at the frothy second mug-measure of cava in Roxy’s cup.
Harriet replayed her own words. Jon had a Tiffany’s …
Her body froze, plummeting to an icy temperature, as a terrible (im)possibility occurred, and Roxy raised her eyes to meet Harriet’s. The look in them was a curdled mixture of guilt and a sort of petulant hostility, like a little girl who’s been caught with her hands in the Christmas trifle.
‘Holy shit,’ Harriet said. ‘That bracelet’s from Jon?”
‘Wait. I don’t understand. Your fella is Joseph?’ Lorna said.
For Harriet, there was a terrible clang.
‘Oh. He’s Jonathan Joseph Barraclough. JJ.’ Harriet paused, licked dry lips, heart racing. ‘I see what you did there.’
‘Please tell me this is a sick joke? Joseph is Jon?’ Lorna said. ‘You’re shagging JON?’
The rain started spitting at them again but now they couldn’t be more indifferent.
‘I knew you’d not take it well. I didn’t know when to mention it …’ Roxy said, in a tiny, hoarse voice, pulling at a blade of grass with a shaky hand.
‘You’re serious? You’re involved with Jon?’ Harriet said. She didn’t want to believe it until utterly forced.
‘Yeah, I am,’ Roxy said, smoothing her hair decorously behind her ear again, as if this was a delicate, sensitive admission being made by a fragile person. As opposed to the most unseemly and violent act of treacherous ugliness that Harriet could currently imagine.
‘He was thinking about putting his house on the market and I went round for a valuation. We always got on great when you two were dating,’ Roxy appealed to a stunned Harriet, as if this was clear mitigation. ‘I think we really work well together.’
‘I feel sick,’ Harriet said. ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. What part of sleeping with my ex behind my back, right after we’ve finished, seemed OK to you? You realise he’s trying to get back at me?’
‘It’s not to get at you,’ Roxy said, in a tone of teacherly admonishment. ‘I’d not do that. Jon wouldn’t do that.’
Harriet jumped to her feet. She had taken a lot; so much, too much. But being chided by her friend – scratch that, her enemy – was so extreme as to finally provoke her to full battle cry. ‘Don’t fucking tell me what he would or wouldn’t do, based on a few weeks of giving him blow jobs in his hot tub!’
A family with young kids ambling past suddenly sped up, as if they’d hit fast forward in a comedy skit.
‘This is properly DISEASED, what is wrong with you?! What part of Jon being off-limits as your latest boyfriend slash benefactor wasn’t obvious to you?’ Harriet cried. She didn’t like fights but this wasn’t any old fight, there was no time to assess anything in the tumult of her feelings – Harriet had lost all inhibition.
Roxy stood up too, brushing grass from her legs, and Lorna realised she had to follow suit.
‘Look. Lorna’s thirty-five today,’ Roxy said, pointing at Lorna, switching tack from Little Girl Lost to drill instructor. ‘We’re almost thirty-five. We’re not kids anymore, we’re supposed to be having kids! There’s no point acting like we can play by cute little rules we had when we were twenty-two in nightclubs.’
‘Cute little rules?’ Harriet repeated, blankly.
‘Jon might not have been right for you, Harriet, but he is a genuinely lovely man, who, if you’re honest with yourself for once, you’d admit you didn’t treat the best. He wants the things I want. Am I meant to throw that opportunity for happiness away?’
‘Wants the things you want! Wants to pay for things and you want to let him?’ Lorna chipped in.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Lore,’ Roxy spat. ‘Stop acting like you’re in charge of us, and know all the right answers to everything. You’ve found Gethin now, but it was more luck than anything. And look at Harriet, still hankering after the bad boy from her twenties. Yeah, girl power, and we’re all going to end up very bitter and poor and alone.’
Harriet did a double take at the word ‘hankering’. One tiny, microscopic mercy: she was no longer fearful of Roxy’s take on the Scott years. Roxy had misread them, and her, and him, at a profound level. In turn, Harriet had misread Roxanne.
‘When were you going to tell me?’ Harriet said, breathlessly.
‘I wanted to be sure Jon and I were serious first.’
‘Oh yes, if it was only loads of naked horseplay, better to leave me in the dark,’ Harriet said, with a shout of unlaughter.
‘This is really proving that telling you from the start would’ve gone well,’ Roxy said, rolling lashed eyes.
Harriet had always known Roxy could be careless, but this nihilistic lack of any concern beyond herself whatsoever was knocking the breath out of her. They’d always indulged Roxy, without ever thinking she was spoilt. It turned out they were also indulging themselves. They’d created a whole notion of who she was and what their friendship meant that wasn’t shared by Roxy. It felt like the tearing-up of a contract, except Harriet was now grasping that there had never actually been one.
‘You can’t have thought you could do this, and it not mean choosing him over us?’ Harriet said. ‘Did you think whether you stay with Jon or not, we’d come back from this?’
‘That’s up to you, isn’t it,’ Roxy said, piously.
She wasn’t even going to have the decency to cop to the consequences. It was Harriet’s intolerance estranging them.
‘Right, thanks. You’re putting the responsibility on me? Then I’m never having anything to do with you ever again.’ She gathered her few things, heart stuttering.
‘So be it,’ Roxy said. She added: ‘You’ve got to do what feels right, too,’ in a resigned yet generous tone, as if she was the sole, white-gloved churchgoer in a den of vice, who hoped for better but knew better. Harriet clutched her coat, afraid that if she loosened her grip she’d slap her.
‘Same here I’m afraid.’ Lorna had stuffed everything back into the basket in seconds flat and linked her arm with Harriet’s.
A grisly additional realisation had dawned on Harriet.
‘The night at The Dive? The night of Scott’s post, when you sacked us off for a date? That was seeing Jon, wasn’t it?’ she said.
Roxy gave a small pout and shrug that was reluctant concession. Lorna let out a low whistle.
‘Wow. You are legitimately horrific,’ Harriet said.
‘You don’t choose who you fall in love with,’ Roxy said, and Lorna hooted.
‘Barbara fuckin’ Cartland here.’
‘That’s exactly what you did,’ Harriet said. ‘You made a very clear choice. Now I’m making mine.’
They strode out of the park in lockstep, leaving Roxy staring after them. Harriet didn’t look back.